


The Case of the Square-Jawed Streetwalker

by Dhobi ki Kutti (dhobikikutti)



Category: Erle Stanley Gardner - Perry Mason series
Genre: Yuletide, challenge:Yuletide 2007, recipient:Parhelion
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-12-19
Updated: 2007-12-19
Packaged: 2017-10-03 09:19:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,251
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16489
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dhobikikutti/pseuds/Dhobi%20ki%20Kutti
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There are some cases that do not make it to the courtrooms. Fortunately.</p><p>Warning: References to sexual assault and murder</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Case of the Square-Jawed Streetwalker

**Author's Note:**

> Written for Parhelion in the Yuletide 2007 Challenge

When Della Street saw the corpse, she walked unobtrusively towards the dumpster around the corner, tucked her hair behind her ears, and threw up.  
Before she could turn around, she felt a warm hand on her back. She closed her eyes for a moment, swallowed once or twice to get rid of the bile still flavouring her throat, and then straightened up.  
Paul Drake had his hand under her elbow as soon as she started to walk back, and he didn't let go of her even when she opened her bag to take out a notebook and pencil.

 

"Paul," Della murmured, as she began stenographing the conversation taking place between Perry Mason and the person kneeling beside the body.

 

"Stow it, doll," Paul shot back laconically. "It's a rare chance to find Perry so shaken he forgets to take care of you, and I'm not about to slip up on that." He adjusted his arm so that it lay around her shoulders, casually giving her a comforting squeeze.

 

When Perry finally did glance at the pair, he seemed to see enough of their suppressed horror to warrant another, more concerned look. Della squared her shoulders, Paul lifted his chin pugnaciously, and Perry nodded slightly, before crouching down to continue his conversation at eye-level with who, it seemed decided, was now his client. Della shuddered as she watched the hem of her boss's pressed trousers turn a darker shade of black as they brushed the blood that glistened stickily on the asphalt alley, surrounding the client's huddled form like some battle-red moat.

 

***

 

The evening had started out so well, in the quiet restaurant where Perry and Della had arrived in order to meet Paul Drake, who seemed to have something on his mind. When Della gently needled him, he refused to discuss it until after their steaks had arrived. Perry smiled, and signaled to the waitress. Against all odds, they made it through dinner without a single phone call interrupting them; laughing together over the close shave Perry had had with his last client. As Paul dryly pointed out, when a marriage proposal is the only legal way to secure a client, perhaps it is time to reevaluate one's priorities.

 

"At least I didn't tamper with the evidence, as Hamilton Burger kept hoping I would," countered Perry.

 

"Is that what they're calling a kiss these days, Chief?" Della asked brightly, and she and Paul laughed at Perry's expression.

 

As they stood in the foyer, the men buttoning their coats and Della winding her scarf around her hair, Perry said, "So, what was this momentous news you wanted to break to us, Paul?" Della echoed his curious glance at the detective, and waited for him to speak.

 

The interruption came then, in the form of their waitress, who hurried nervously through the doors and plunged through the foyer entrance. Perry was only a step ahead of Paul in following her outside; all three had seen the tears in her eyes.

 

The waitress was walking out into the middle of the street in her frantic search for a taxi. Perry jerked his head at Paul, and the three of them piled into the detective's car, pulling up in front of the waitress, who seemed too dazed to object when Della reached out from the back seat of the car and gently tugged her inside.

 

"Where do you need to go?" asked Perry, firmly enough to render irrelevant all other protestations of help.

 

As soon as the waitress stammered an address, Paul took off, cutting through the evening LA traffic with a skill that made Perry mutter a comment about the hypocrisy of certain people talking about being able to bend rules to their convenience. Della held onto the waitress's hand waiting until the woman was able to gasp out "my sister.... She called. She needs help. Oh God, I don't know..." The naked terror in her eyes welled up to a shuddering silence.

 

Fifteen minutes later, when they pulled up at the mouth of the alley, the waitress refused to get out of the car. Paul could see two figures in the shadow of a building, one lying down, the other seemingly crouched. Perry bent over the door of the rear seat and said, "I think you know I'm a lawyer." When the waitress nodded dully at him, he continued, "Before I go ahead, I think you need to tell me who you want me to represent. Your sister, or you? I have to warn you..."

 

Before he could finish, the waitress stabbed her finger in the direction of the crouching figure. "That's who needs help," she snarled fiercely. "You go help over there. I'm not a part of this." And she got out of the car and began walking, away from the alley and the lawyer, the streetlights striping her passage.

 

***

 

"My name is Trixie Rosaria," said the client dully. "I am 22 years old. What else do you want me to tell you?"

 

Lieutenant Tragg looked cautiously at Perry Mason before asking, "Do you know who killed the victim?" Perry Mason remained a silent, granite presence at his client's side, interfering in no way.

 

"I do not know who they were." Trixie Rosaria said. "We were both standing on the sidewalk, here. It was a slow night. A car pulled up beside us. It was a dark blue car. Or maybe it was dark gray. I do not notice the difference in cars. They talked to Tony, asked how much for a night. Tony decided I shouldn't go with them and told them I wasn't working. They drove away, and then came back with two more men in the car. They all got out and they did what they wanted to do. With Tony. They left."

 

"What were you doing when this was happening?" Lieutenant Tragg asked, leaning in closer to study Trixie Rosaria. She looked blankly at him.

 

"I was hiding in the dumpster where Tony told me to stay."

 

"Until they left?"

 

"Yes."

 

"And then?"

 

"Then I got out."

 

When it became apparent that this was the end of the statement, Tragg prompted, "And then?"

 

Trixie Rosaria looked the medical coroner examining Tony's body as the police photographer recorded the evidence. "Then I sat next to Tony. Until they came." She raised a hand in a gesture that encompassed Della and Paul, along with Perry.

 

Lieutenant Tragg scratched his jaw reflectively. "Thank you," he said, at last, "...ma'am."

 

After the corpse had been taken away, Lieutenant Tragg stepped up to Perry Mason with an air of approaching a dormant volcano. Paul Drake and Della Street had moved to flank Trixie Rosaria, whose arms hung down like limp straw.

 

"Look here, Mason, do you think you can give me some actual facts about why you are here, for a change?" Tragg said, in a tone that was surprisingly soft and free from accusation.

 

Looking Tragg in the eyes, Mason said, deliberately, "I'm here to protect my client from the charge of solicitation."

 

Tragg sighed. "She won't be charged, Mason, not when she was hiding in a dumpster from rape and assault." Perry Mason inclined his head in acknowledgement.

 

Tragg looked around again at the scene. "Well, I guess I'm all finished here, for now." He addressed Trixie Rosaria. "You may be subpoenaed as a material witness, if we find the perpetrators, ma'am. You're free to go home now. I... I am sorry for the loss of your friend. Good night, ma'am."

 

As Tragg got into the police car, he looked back at the tableau in the alley. Trixie Rosaria, a slight, thin body crowned with a mass of bottle-blonde hair, dressed in a too-tight red dress, broken high heels beside her. Perry Mason, solidly at her back, stone still, a dark scarf wrapped up out of the way over his suit. Della Street with her arm around Trixie, dark hair pushed away from her face, dressed in a cheap but perfectly respectable skirt, a man's jacket, Drake's in all probability, buttoned around her. Paul Drake on Trixie's other side, his arms in folded shirtsleeves crossed against lanky frame.

 

And all four of them with hands, arms, clothes, stained by blood.

 

***

 

Rosaria Priest was the waitress's name. She sat on the edge of Della Street's sofa, holding a bag containing some clothes. After a while, Paul Drake came out of Della's bedroom, and took them from her. Rosaria glanced at Della. "I don't know if they'll fit," she said, "my brother was bigger." Della smiled reassuringly. "I'll go and check," she said, as she got up and went into the bedroom.

 

Rosaria Priest looked at Perry Mason, who was standing by the window, alert every time the headlights of a car flashed by. "He can't pay you," she said hostilely, "and I..."

 

"It's not necessary, Miss Priest." said Perry, without looking at her. Her face tightened. "And if, later on, you change your mind?"

 

He looked at her then. "I am no more likely to change my mind than you are to change yours."

 

She flushed. "That's different. He's my brother. Even when... it's _family_."

 

"Yes," Perry Mason nodded. "And it takes all kinds to make a family, does it not?"

 

In the bedroom, Della Street looked critically at two men's ties in her hand. "Here," she said at last, "I think this one goes with the jacket more."

 

Trixie Rosaria looked at the man in the mirror, slender and dark-haired, eyes shuttering a loss too deep for the tensely held mouth to speak of.

 

"My sister hates me." Trixie Rosaria said.

 

"Your sister said her _sister_ needed help." Paul Drake said laconically. The man in the mirror flushed.

 

When Rosaria's brother came out of the bedroom, she reached out and held him fiercely against herself. Then she let go just as abruptly, and marched to the door. "We should go now," she said.

 

The young man hesitated, then turned to Perry, who had detached himself from the window, and now loomed beside Della and Paul. He held out his hand and gave firm handshakes all around. As he turned to go, he heard Perry say, in a voice as kind and gentle as ever used to a lady, "A woman I love once told me that it's a woman's instinct to do anything for the man she loves, Trixie. Anything."

 

"Can't say I'd think much of a man who'd do any less," Paul Drake put in, gruffly, and when Trixie Rosaria and his sister looked back before the door of the apartment shut behind them, they saw Paul's hand on Perry's shoulder, as Della leaned back against them both.

 

***

 

"You're still wearing Trixie's shirt, aren't you?" Paul asked softly, as he reached for Della Street and began gently unbuttoning his jacket and pulling it off her shoulders.

 

Della nodded, and she, in turn, reached out and tugged her scarf from about Perry's neck. "I'm afraid it's stained beyond repair," he said tiredly.

 

"I can charge it to your expense account, Chief," Della said with a gentle smile.

 

One by one, all the bloodstained clothes were discarded on the floor, and the steam from Della's shower misted up the bathroom mirror.

 

When the doorbell rang, Della answered it wrapped in a fluffy dressing gown. Lieutenant Tragg had to flash his badge before she let him in. "I figured it out, so you don't need to say much," he said abruptly. "We found the shoes in the dumpster after I went back to look for the pants."

 

Della said nothing.

 

Tragg sighed. "Look, I can't say I really get it, but I'm not a monster. I saw what they did to him... to _her_. What I don't understand is why you all deliberately messed up the little chance we have to catch them."

 

Della kept quiet. After a while, she said, "If you catch them, what can you accuse them of, and what is the jury going to think?"

 

It was Lieutenant Tragg's turn for silence.

 

As Tragg got up to leave, he said loudly enough to be heard in the bedroom, "I am a homicide investigator. The enforcements of the sodomy laws in this state have never been my concern, nor, I trust, will ever be." He looked down at the pile of clothes on the floor. `Why don't you at least marry him?" he asked Della, a rough sympathy warring with a gruff reticence in his voice.

 

Della put her hand on his shoulder as she let him out. "It would not be fair to Paul," she whispered, and Arthur Tragg's eyes narrowed in sudden comprehension.

 

***

 

There are not normally many attendees at the funeral of a murdered pimp, but this one had enough to make one police officer remark to the other that it was a surprise that no one had protested about the stone mason's error. `Toni Rosaria. Dearly Beloved' it said.

 

Lieutenant Tragg never said a word, except when he went up to a young woman, standing with a man clearly her brother; both dark-haired and dry-eyed, dressed somberly in black.

 

"Please extend my condolences to Miss Trixie, your sister," he said, as he shook hands with both of them.

 

He gave a brief nod to Perry Mason, who returned the nod with a steady look, followed by a small smile. Della Street and Paul Drake flanked Mason, as usual, and Lieutenant Tragg took in the three of them, before inclining his head once more, in respectful farewell.


End file.
